May-December
by nothing-chan
Summary: "Sensei, have you ever dreamt?" Madotsuki's voice was its own dreamy whisper, a note too high pitched to be produced from any instrument. "Of course I dream, who hasn't dreamt at some point?" She continued to crack her sick knuckles against the steel wood, "Have you ever dreamt of me?"


She was thirteen years old when Masada was instructed to not look her in the eye and teach her to play the piano.

She was the smartest thirteen year old he had ever met, with eyelids that dragged to the floor like anchors and fawn legs that quivered every time she stood and spoke. Maybe she was too smart, that is why they padlocked her into this cell of quietness and solitary studies, away from the world, because the world did not want to see intelligence like hers.

The first thing she said to him was, "You have nice long fingers, piano fingers. Mine are short, like old pieces of chalk, so you'll probably get frustrated with me," then she sat down, opened her paperback collection of beginners pieces, and spread her fingers out across the keyboard preternaturally.

Masada was used to instructing children, but not this child, if she could even be called that. Some days she seemed so much more aware than he was, like she knew some mountainous secret that quirked her lips up and made her shoulders shake when he turned his back to her crumpled frame. Each time he turned back around she would be grinning, feral but artless, as if he had a scrap of food rammed between his teeth or she had taped a slanderous sign to his back, but never spoke a word in defiance.

Every day she caught on quicker, faster, nimbly sliding her laconic digits over the milk white keys until she was conjuring up sounds, then songs, then symphonies that took months to learn, pieces that she managed to shout in mere weeks.

One day, as she was stretching her fingers against the unblemished wood, she paused, glancing up from beneath her barely open lids.

"Sensei, have you ever dreamt?" Madotsuki's voice was its own dreamy whisper, a note too high pitched to be produced from any instrument.

"Of course I dream, who hasn't dreamt at some point?" Masada pulled out a new set of compositions, a collection of his favorite, necessary because of her incrementing skill. At this rate, she would be as gifted as him by the age of sixteen, a talent of hers most likely to rot to grotesque tumors of wasted hope inside her suffocating home. "Now, today we'll be playing some of my favorite pieces."

She did not seem overtly delighted by this however, and continued to crack her sick knuckles against the steel wood. "Have you ever dreamt of me?"

Masada paused, fingers a candle flame between the yellowing pages in his palm, eyes riveted to the short creature seated next to him. "No, No I don't think so. Why?"

"Strange, sometimes I dream about you, you know," she slid her hands across the keys, not enough pressure to build up a harmony, "But you look funny, different. Your eyes are uneven but you don't have a face, and you talk in this alien voice that sounds so jumbled. You play piano though, in a spaceship, a spaceship on its way to Mars."

The once taut atmosphere was released when Masada laughed at her words, solaced to hear her express some sort of childlike mannerism, even if it were only through dreams. Even the dreams he had on black carbonated nights were even stranger, but he kept that fact to himself as he elegantly brought forth his favorite composition. "Well, if I ever dream of you, I'll be sure to let you know."

* * *

Oddly enough, that night, he dreamt of her.

He was extrinsic looking, with a melted white face and sopping inky body, but it was him, and he was in front of a piano, with jet dark space careening by just outside the window.

Madotsuki stood next to him, in the unnervingly blanch surroundings, silently plucking at perfectly tuned keys, following no pattern and swaying to no beat, just tapping and tapping and striking and tapping.

She looked up upon his entrance, and for the first time he saw her eyes solely open, a sorry collection of golden red that kept him benumbed as she slipped an obtuse object from her pocket.

Masada stepped back, watching the blade rise between them, serrated and vein splitting underneath the fluorescent lights. She stepped forward and he opened his sewn mouth to speak, but all that strew out were disorderly sounds no translator could ever dismember. She stepped forward, he stepped back, she stepped forward, he slammed to a wall, twisted fingers raised in fear, circular eyes screaming in nightmare.

* * *

The minute Masada walked in Madotsuki smiled, the perspicacious grin, the in-on-something sneer, "Did you dream of me last night?"

"In fact, I did. How did you know?" More interested in her smirk than the forgotten lesson books in his bag, he slid onto the bench, tree trunk hands intertwined simply on his lap.

"You just looked surprised to see me, is all. Like you didn't expect me to be who I am, you were expecting me to be the dream me. Did I look different? What did I do?" She seemed hopeful and excited, finally the juvenile alight to sickly colored candy corn or lustrously wrapped presents. The effulgence of her bound eyes made Masada's skin prickle, hairs whirling around in the air. He could not tell her she was the villain of his dream, that she had created a nightmare he jumped awake from, sweating profusely. He would lie to this child.

"Well, I was the dream me you were talking about, with an uneven face. And we were on a spaceship, I don't know if it was heading for Mars, but it certainly looked that way. There were no stars though, unfortunately…" He trailed off; glancing down at her hands already prepared to create music, stretched as far as their webbed connection would let them go, hands that had gripped a knife. "You had cat ears, and a cat tail, and meowed many times. We played piano for a bit, then I woke up."

Madotsuki seemed satisfied with this answer, a weaker smile melting onto her face, but there was something about the way she shifted her frail body toward him that murmured that she knew, that she caught the scent of the lie the minute Masada had walked in, nervously conflicted. "We'll have to start trading dreams now, since I guess you'll be dreaming about me more often."

* * *

And indeed he did dream of her more often, every night at that.

It was always the same setting, white washed, unwelcoming walls, barren in its directness, Madotsuki at his side, weapon branded and awaiting for him to arrive and fall victim to it.

He dreamt too much he was afraid to sleep, to wake up to the stale ammonia cleaner smell and freezing cold tile, to the freezing cold ammonia girl next to him, grinning insidiously as she cornered him to the same wall, slashed him with the same dagger, over and over and over and over and over, until he woke up screaming and tearing at the skin on his stomach because it burnt with animal claw marks. His bed was perpetually stained with a sheen of sweat in the shape of his limbs, unable to stop the hideous shivering and weeping that overcame his body upon his return to reality, fingernails caked with dead skin cells.

He always told Madotsuki the same thing, that she was a cat in his dreams, that they played new, unbelievable piano pieces together, that once they even saw a star, hovering just outside the window, close enough to lick with their Velcro feline tongues. This was a lie he was content to continue spewing, until one night she really became a cat in his dream.

He was standing at the piano, awaiting his gruesome fate, when the keys sputtered and tickled out noises as she appeared on top of the keyboard, displayed over the creamy ivory and velvet instrument. Her paws touched every range and curled over the bumps and crevices perfectly, innocuously revealing the pale scope of skin just under her shirt with her stretch, a subtle seduction.

The way she blinked at him, rose-gold retinas leaving the once planar world around them sputtering to life made Masada weak, shuttering forward when she opened her mouth to mewl airily, unable to resist the siren sound that trickled into his ears with every passing second. Madotsuki's tail wrapped around his outstretched hand, caressing and condemning the skin it touched, winding up his arm and leaving him breathless, hand choking the nape of her neck so hard it felt as though he might snap it, but continued to squeeze as she glanced up at him encouragingly, supple ears twitching in the starlight.

* * *

"So, did you dream last night?" She asked, once he had laid all his belongings down, downcast eyes avoiding her expectant stare.

"No, I didn't dream at all…" He sat down, never once meeting her eyes, the large pupils that traced his every move, "Let's start, alright?"

Throughout their lesson, Masada remained silent, disconcertingly so, scrutinizing the way her agile fingers now played with ease, as if she did not need him there, this newfound independence frightening him in a way. Had she always been like this? Perfectly composed, able to control the sounds she produced from the beast of a machine in front of her, reigning in the monstrosities of melody and measure. Had she always been so old? A wise seer from birth that mastered any skill and put the most powerful to shame with one alacritous glance. Had she always been so beautiful? With a soft nose that tugged on her upper lip, with a transcendent mind that pulled in any matter around, digesting it to a hybrid mix that only she could understand, that Masada would have given anything in the world to understand, just once.

She was a little girl, but she was so much more than knee socks and loosely tied braids. She was a little girl who knew everything.

* * *

Masada pulled the cup of ramen closer to his face, hoping the trenchant scent of chicken would keep his eyes from falling shut, hoping for tonight he could not dream, that he could keep his mind focused on the game show reruns blasting from his television set, that he would not see her in his mind, killing and loving him in a way so grotesque and disgusting he felt ashamed of himself the next day.

When the door to his apartment was suddenly attacked by a vicious amount of knocks, he grew nervous, aware that a visitor at three am was never a respectable one.

The one, who stood on the other side of the threshold, was the ultimate miscreant, upturned nose red and hair unkempt at her shoulders.

"Madotsuki? What are you doing here?"

"I had a dream that we crashed, Sensei. There were lights and loud noises and you were so worried, and then we just crashed, I'm so scared."

Masada staggered for a moment, ghosting in the doorway, before shuffling her inside, hoping no one saw this late night guest.

"Why didn't you just wait until tomorrow to see me? This is dangerous Madotsuki, you could have gotten hurt," he motioned toward the chair he had once inhabited but she shook her head, arms folded and body occluded.

"My parents… they said they wanted to stop my piano lessons. They said I was good enough, but I'm not. I want to be better, like you, I don't want to go back to not being worth anything."

Masada observed her stare intently at her feet, muddy and leaving a conspicuous trail to the door, before stepping forward, pulling her into his chest, barely reaching to his erratic heart.

"They've locked me up for so long; I don't want to be alone again."

The host of the show screamed in the distant backdrop, the audience gamboling in response, flooding the room with the chatter it needed, keeping Masada safe in his fruitless voice box. Madotsuki was warm in him, seeping into him, boring into his back with her chewed nails, barely applying enough pressure to disrupt a butterfly.

"I want to sleep," she whispered into his chest, lips grinding past the hollowness of his rib bones, burrowing into the groove of his sternum.

"Alright, come here," he temperately guided her by the elbow to his bedroom, highfalutin bed inviting and shimmering in the moonlight. She crawled in wordlessly, tucking herself under the covers, sinking into the indent Masada had taken years to make, body engulfed in his larger frame.

It took him a minute before he bent down and pressed his lips to hers, unmoving, tasting the clarity and freedom upon her body, sadness bellowing to his core. Madotsuki had slipped into the land of the dreamers, eyelids fluttering and body rigid with internal movement, playing a game inside her mind that Masada wished to see, to feel, but was left to watch from the outside of the dim reality he was faced with.

She dreamt of him because he was the only one she knew, the only human she had ever had contact with, as if he were an angel sent to rescue her from the oppressive restrain of her parents. Without him, she had no one, save herself and the world of her dreams, and he could not leave her alone.

They needed to escape, to get as far away as soon as possible. They would come looking for her, and him, and they would disentangle them, sending Masada to a hellish life of an outcast and Madotsuki back to the excruciating life that jaded her from the real truth she could accomplish.

Masada silently crept over to his closet, removing a suitcase when the front door erupted into violent knocks once again.

* * *

When Madotsuki woke up, they were crashing.

There were men running and lights flashing and so much noise it crushed her skull, shoved a twirling drill into her nostril and ripped her brain to mush, paralyzed as she watched the havoc unfold before her sleep laden eyes. The spaceship was nose diving sprightly, flashing white and red as Masada was pulled by his seized hands, wailing for her, dismayingly human, jet eyes, locked onto Madotsuki's until the minute the police wrenched him out the door.

* * *

_Hello._

_Omg my first time writing for Yume Nikki and my first time writing a straight couple this is insane. Wow. I deserve a medal or something damn._

_I just love love love the idea that Masada and Madotsuki were a teacher/student sort of couple in her life, hence the name May-December. if you don't know, May-December relationships are ones where one person is usually a lot older than the other (also happens to be one of my favorite kinks oops)_

_So please review, favorite, and have a great Spring._


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